VacationSelector

Dresden or Shanghai?

Two destinations compared on nine measures of openly sourced data. Weight what matters to you and the verdict follows.

Your match

Dresden
48
match

Wins on museums & heritage and sights concentration with your weighting.

Shanghai
✓ Best match
54
match

Wins on good for families and value for money with your weighting.

What matters to you?

Pick a travel style or drag the sliders. The match scores above update as you do.

Scoreboard

Each measure scored 0 to 100. Open a row for the figures behind the score.

DresdenShanghai
Beaches & swimming. Shanghai leads by 17 points.17
DresdenShanghai
Score017
Swim season months05
Beaches 10 km220
Coast distance267 km18 km
Water distance18 km
Places to eatWe cannot measure this for Shanghai.
Museums & heritage. Dresden leads by 9 points.9
DresdenShanghai
Score5445
Museums within 10 km66108
Museums within 2 km of centre3428
Share of museums within 2 km %5226
Unesco sites within 50 km10
NightlifeWe cannot measure this for Shanghai.
Nature & day trips. Shanghai leads by 3 points.3
DresdenShanghai
Score3942
Protected land share 50 km %149
Landscape blanket share 50 km %90
Land share of disc %10082
Park area within 2 km80 hectares83 hectares
Good for families. Shanghai leads by 22 points.22
DresdenShanghai
Score5981
Tourist attractions within 2 km3286
Park area within 2 km80 hectares83 hectares
Theme parks within 30 km210
Sights concentration. Dresden leads by 2 points.2
DresdenShanghai
Score5351
Notable places within 2 km8273
Min wikipedia languages55
Value for money. Shanghai leads by 19 points.19
DresdenShanghai
Score6079
Price level global75.949
Daily budget€163
Year-round weather. Shanghai leads by 3 points.3
DresdenShanghai
Score6265
Monthly daytime high4 °C to 26.2 °C8.5 °C to 33.2 °C
Monthly rainfall31 mm to 83 mm43 mm to 216 mm
Dry months40
0255075100

When should you go?

The figures behind each month. Each row is shaded against that destination's own year, so the deepest cell is its best month for that measure and the palest its weakest. Shades are not comparable between the two rows.

J
F
M
A
M
J
J
A
S
O
N
D
Daytime high, °C
Dresden
4
6
10
17
21
24
26
26
21
15
9
6
Shanghai
9
11
15
21
26
28
33
33
29
23
18
12
Sea temperature, °C
Dresden
No coastline within reach
Shanghai
8
7
10
14
19
22
26
28
26
21
17
12
Rainfall, mm
Dresden
46
31
36
36
64
72
80
83
55
49
40
45
Shanghai
69
65
88
72
84
192
151
216
97
64
53
43
Daylight, hours per day
Dresden
9
10
12
14
16
17
16
15
13
11
9
8
Shanghai
10
11
12
13
14
14
14
13
12
11
11
10
Sunshine, hours per day
Dresden
2
3
4
6
7
7
7
7
6
4
2
2
Shanghai
4
4
5
5
6
4
6
6
5
5
4
4

Temperature and rainfall are thirty-year climate normals, averaged over the years shown. Dresden: 1991-2020 normals, Dresden-Strehlen (3.8 km from centre). Shanghai: 1991-2020 normals, Shanghai / Hongqiao (8.1 km from centre).

WorseBetter

Getting there

Flying fromDresdenShanghai
ParisCDG, ORY, BVA
1 h 40 m
€86-113
PRG · 112 km
11 h 35 m
no fares
PVG · 33 km
AmsterdamAMS
1 h 30 m
€163-247
PRG · 112 km
11 h 10 m
no fares
PVG · 33 km
MilanMXP, BGY, LIN
1 h 25 m
€57-79
PRG · 112 km
11 h 25 m
no fares
PVG · 33 km
RomeFCO, CIA
1 h 45 m
€62-97
PRG · 112 km
11 h 25 m
no fares
PVG · 33 km
BeijingPEK, PKX
9 h 20 m
€718-820
2 stops
BER · 147 km
2 h 0 m
€150-154
PVG · 33 km
IstanbulIST, SAW
2 h 25 m
€118-136
PRG · 112 km
10 h 5 m
no fares
PVG · 33 km
BarcelonaBCN
2 h 15 m
€111-155
PRG · 112 km
12 h 15 m
no fares
PVG · 33 km
MadridMAD
2 h 45 m
€146-195
1 stop
PRG · 112 km
12 h 45 m
no fares
PVG · 33 km
New YorkJFK, EWR, LGA
8 h 10 m
€737
BER · 147 km
14 h 40 m
no fares
PVG · 33 km
DubaiDXB, DWC
5 h 55 m
€276-321
1 stop
PRG · 112 km
8 h 15 m
€508-557
1 stop
PVG · 33 km

The busiest departure cities for these two, with a place kept for each other part of the world. Busiest means arriving passengers where an official count exists, and where none does, the number of non-stop services flown: official route statistics are published by the European reporting countries and by nobody else, so a table ranked on them alone would offer a reader in New York or Tokyo ten European cities. Flying times are estimated from the distance between airports, and every row is a city flown non-stop to both. Where the typical offer connects anyway, the stops are shown. Under each figure is the airport the flight lands at and how far that is from the centre, because the nearest airport is not always the one a route is flown to. Where both columns name the same airport it is one flight, and the difference between the two is the distance printed beside it. Typical return fares for 2026-08 to 2026-10, cached market data up to 7 days old. The figure is the middle half of the offers found, so a single price means they agreed and a range means they did not; for a typical route that middle half spans about a quarter of the median, and for the least settled routes rather more than the median itself.

Before you go

MeasureDresdenShanghai
Official languageGermanPutonghua
CurrencyEuro (EUR)Yuan Renminbi (CNY)
SocketsCF230 V, 50 HzACI220 V, 50 Hz
Driving sideRightRight
Time zoneUTC+1, UTC+2 in summerUTC+8
Emergency number112Police 110, ambulance 120, fire 119
Elevation126 m4 m
Main airportDresden Airport (DRS)10 km from centre12 non-stop destinationsShanghai Pudong International Airport (PVG)33 km from centre200 non-stop destinations
Public holidays this year11 days6 days

By the numbers

MeasureDresdenShanghai
City population564,90424,870,895
People per km²1,7203,922
Museums within 10 km7044
UNESCO World Heritage sites within 50 km10
Distinct cuisines in the centre7764
Swim season, months above 21 °C5 months

Where else could you go?

Every comparison below shares a destination with this one, so you can follow Dresden or Shanghai somewhere new.

Browse every destination we have measured

Sources

© OpenStreetMap contributors, data available under the Open Database Licence. Place counts include data from Overture Maps Foundation (CDLA Permissive 2.0), assembled from Meta, Microsoft, Foursquare and other providers. Notable-place counts from Wikidata (CC0), weighted by Wikipedia language editions. Structured data from Wikidata (CC0). Weather data by Meteostat. Meteorological data provided by NOAA, DWD and others. Airport data from OurAirports (public domain). Tourism statistics from Eurostat, © European Union, reused under CC BY 4.0. Public holidays from Nager.Date (MIT). Non-stop route lists from the "Airlines and destinations" tables on English Wikipedia airport articles, by Wikipedia contributors, reused under CC BY-SA 4.0. Currency from the ISO 4217 register maintained by SIX, cross-checked against country data from GeoNames (CC BY 4.0). Price level from World Bank open data (PPP conversion factor for private consumption and official exchange rate), CC BY 4.0. Time zones from GeoNames (CC BY 4.0); clock offsets computed from the IANA time zone database. Sea surface temperature from NOAA OISST v2.1, NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory. Exchange rates via Frankfurter, based on European Central Bank reference rates. Daylight hours computed from each destination's latitude using the NOAA solar position algorithm. Typical fares from Travelpayouts (Aviasales data). Route-level air passenger statistics from Eurostat, © European Union, reused under CC BY 4.0.

Scores follow rubric v2; snapshot generated 2026-08-31. Typical prices can be up to 7 days old. Daily budgets are estimates from country price levels.